Extract from ABC News
Bingo Industries has partnered with LGI, the company building the power generator plant. (Supplied: LGI)
In short:
Bingo Industries' "rotten egg" gas from its landfill in Western Sydney will soon power a major generator and be converted into renewable electricity.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has received over 750 complaints from neighbours complaining of the landfill's odour.
What's next?
By the end of January, the site in Eastern Creek will have 60 gas wells, drilled 30 metres deep, each vacuuming methane and other gases.
The "rotten egg" gas from a Western Sydney landfill that led to hundreds of complaints from neighbours and a successful court prosecution will be among the gases piped into a generator and converted into renewable electricity.
Bingo Industries plans on capturing the gas from its landfill at Eastern Creek and using it to power a 4-megawatt generator — creating enough electricity to power the equivalent of 7,000 homes a year.
The development will take methane — a gas 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide that's harming the atmosphere — and other gases to produce a green form of power.
The recycling facility had received hundreds of complaints from members of the local community due to the smell. (Supplied: Bingo)
Peter Newman, a professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and a long-time adviser to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the proposal represents a stride forward in the sustainable treatment of waste.
"Waste is so hard to deal with in our cities around the world," he said.
"If you can actually turn it into power and burn it in the process, then that's even better, because you're making something very useful out of it, as well as protecting the atmosphere."
Peter Newman from Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute said waste is a perennial problem for cities around the world. (ABC News: Claire Moodie)
Offensive gas leads to 750 complaints
Bingo Industries' treatment of gases from its Eastern Creek landfill started with a challenge, before the company identified an opportunity.
In 2021, residents of Minchinbury, Eastern Creek and Horsley Park were blanketed in the trace gas hydrogen sulfide, known for its "rotten egg" smell.
At the height of the issue, the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) received about 750 complaints from neighbours over three months to June 2021, claiming the landfill's odour was keeping them indoors.
The technology to convert gases from landfills has been growing over the last few years. (Supplied: NSW government)
The Land and Environment Court issued a ruling against Bingo Industries' subsidiary Dial-A-Dump last year, ordering them to pay a $280,000 fine and cover the EPA's costs of approximately $410,000.
"There was a plethora of evidence that many residents affected by the odour suffered very real psychological and physical harm, as well as considerable harm to their amenity," Justice Rachel Pepper said.
Bingo Industries treated the odour in response to the complaints by installing flares that transmuted the methane into carbon dioxide and water.
Turning harmful gas into electricity
Up to 2 million tonnes per year of solid and asbestos waste can make its way to Bingo Industries' recycling ecology park in Eastern Creek, according to a modification assessment report by the NSW government.
As the organic material in its landfill decomposes, it produces methane, carbon dioxide and trace gases like hydrogen sulfide.
These gases release into the atmosphere if they are not treated, polluting the air and producing offensive smells.
Bingo Industries plans on mining these gases and using them to generate enough electricity to power some of its operations, before feeding anything left over into the electricity network.
Converting the gas to electricity will "improve environmental outcomes for the community", a company spokesman said, and lower emissions at its Eastern Creek facility.
"This project will enhance Bingo's earlier investment of around $5 million in landfill gas infrastructure, and ability to capture the gas generated from the landfill," they said.
The electricity generated from mining the gases will be used to power operations at Bingo Industries. (Supplied: LGI)
Bingo Industries has formed a partnership with Australian company LGI, which will spend up to $18.5 million building the power generator plant, and it will run it around the clock for at least 15 years.
"Even today, if we found a new solution to our waste problem, all these [landfill] sites will continue to produce gas for decades," chief executive of LGI Jarryd Doran said.
"We have a facility here in Brisbane which has not received rubbish for 20 years, and we can still recover enough gas from it to generate electricity 24/7."
How the technology works
By the end of January, the landfill at Bingo Industries will have 60 gas wells, drilled 30 metres deep, each vacuuming methane and other gases.
Jarryd Doran from LGI said facilities can emit gases long after they have stopped receiving waste. (Supplied)
The gases will be piped into a power generator plant, where moisture and contaminants would be removed, before being fed into four 1 megawatt engines, each capable of combusting 700 cubic metres of landfill gas per hour.
LGI will then sell the electricity it generates to Bingo Industries.
"It's more commercially attractive to them, but it's also environmentally better off than if they were buying black power or electricity directly from the market," Mr Doran said.
Construction of the power generator plant is scheduled to be finished by June, but there are already plans to expand it by adding batteries and increasing its capacity.
Dozens of examples around the country
The technology to harvest gases from landfills and convert it into electricity has been emerging over the past two decades.
Mr Doran said compared to other countries, Australia has been comparatively slow at adopting it.
The Clean Energy Regulator said there are 55 registered sites currently using gas from their landfill to generate renewable electricity across Australia — 13 of them in NSW.
"The opportunity is to contribute some positive, hopeful solutions in an area where we are so used to getting just bad news," Dr Newman said.
"We've got an example here where an Australian company is showing us how to do something sensible with waste."
No comments:
Post a Comment